Castings fares badly for Manganese

MANGANESE Bronze, the black cab manufacturer, has issued a warning that its Midlands-based precision castings business had turned last year's small profit into a £1.2m loss in the first half of its financial year.

Chief executive Ian Pickering explained that an attempt to ramp up volume production of particular components for the car industry had failed and that it would return to producing smaller batches but at higher margins.

Manganese, whose stock market performance has been blighted by poor sales of London taxis, also gave warning that it is behind on its planned introduction of a mobile phone taxi hailing service called Zingo. Pickering said there had been delays in integrating the technology and in the negotiations with the mobile network operators. More details on the £8m project are expected in March.

The company said that despite the setbacks, group-wide performance is still in line with City expectations for the full year to 31 July.

Taxi sales are up by 8% on last year but still nearly 25% down on two years ago. The shares, which recently touched 18-month highs, fell 12p to 132 1/2p.